Provincials

Photos courtesy of Craig Taylor, supporter and coach extraordinaire.

Over the past six days I've travelled 23 hours and raced twice, but I felt great for my race today. Draft-legal provincial championships was supposed to be an A-race for me this year, but given my injury troubles from late-June to mid-July it simply became a race to gain some valuable experience in a drafting format against some of the best young athletes in Canada.

My swim training has really been limited over the past six weeks so my plan for the race was to swim my own pace and get out of the water feeling good to throw it down on the bike in hopes of catching someone, then have a decent run. I did my best not to get annihilated through the first 300 meters but I got knocked around quite a bit until I found some friendly feet to sit on. I exited the water about two minutes down of the lead group...a little disappointing but I was feeling fresh and ready to hit the bike hard.

I buried myself through the first 3k on the bike and managed to catch a couple juniors. I immediately started my barking orders but we quickly dropped one rider and were stuck trying to chase with some limited firepower. I thought second chase pack was in our sights, but with the main packs working together with 5-10 strong guys we didn't have much of a chance to make up time. I went through a few more stragglers who couldn't hang on to do any work, and unfortunately my bike fitness is not quite where I want it and I couldn't put time into the larger groups up the road.

By 10k there were two main packs well up the road from us, so I focused on riding smart and holding back a bit for the run...a nice aspect of draft legal! I led our little group of three or four into T2 and dropped them through transition. I focused on running relaxed and staying light on my feet, and to my surprise my body agreed with me today. I made up a few more places through the run and ended up with a 17:46 5k. In a perfect world I would have liked to see a slightly faster run but it's my best so far this year so I can't complain with that in my first drafting race.

Overall I was happy with how things went today. My tactics were good (or as good as they can be when riding mainly solo) and I executed well given my fitness. Two solid efforts in two weeks after 3 months of frustration...I can't complain. Back to the grinding stone for a couple weeks to hammer out some speed in the water then off to nationals.